Solar Eclipse 1999

ITV - Westcountry Eclipse! The Final Countdown

The only ITV region that did a proper show for the eclipse.

Also with that vintage 1999 continuity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ugzaq4lMlDs



Another couple of UK videos:

The Sky At Night episode, "The Eclipse from Cornwall" (15 Aug 1999)
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZ7SruNJV64

Other UK TV clips:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn2MdHoYJEg

Finally, the country that had the longest eclipse of all on that day, two minutes and 23 seconds.

And the longest TV show

Romania - Pro TV

The eclipse is around this time in the part 2 video - https://youtu.be/0yub8-1Tmh8?t=1h28m23s





Also in Romania:

TVR

Not from live TV, but this is probably the coolest video of the cosmic event It was filmed by Televiziunea Română at Bucharest observatory:

From the time when it was Carlton owned and they had a bit of money to spend on big specials. They did a OB one Saturday afternoon to cover Cornwall playing in a rugby final at Wembley around that time

Not an event they could ignore really, although most people in their region would probably have been outside watching it for real (those that weren't under clouds of course)

Was that a bit of a cock-up at the end, with no credits? Noticed the endcap said “A Westcountry Production for ITV” with the ITV logo which had been discontinued the previous year.

Did Channel Television have any special coverage? I found this clip on the ITV website. http://www.itv.com/news/channel/update/2015-03-19/archive-the-1999-solar-eclipse/

The poor (and pointless) conversion from 4:3 to 16:9 is particularly noticeable as it made the sun an oval shape.

I love the exclamation mark in the programme names. They just can't contain their excitement!

(Shame that Videotech Eclipse! Special hasn't made its way onto YouTube - though I suspect it would just fall foul of copyright claims)

Is it possible that Channel showed it themselves? Or did they not have the budget?

(They still don't have any, judging by that video.)

At least two channels were live on location in Alderney - Discovery as mentioned earlier:






BBC One's show also had reports from there with Jamie Theakston, whose inclusion in broadcasts was mandatory at the time.

In a weird Greek-French-CNN-BBC-World crossover, that channel took live pictures from other countries' channels, in this sequence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6X_3vfu4ww&t=23m05s
Trust astronomers to get good satellite reception... The French TV5 (as it was then) used the same coverage seen on France 2.

Though if it was a regional programme it didn't need the ITV logo at all

Yes - that was the rule until the previous October when the ITV logo shown would have been appropriate.

I wonder whether it was shown on Channel, and if so how that would have been achieved. This was before ITV was available on satellite and even when it did become available, Channel still used a dirty Meridian analogue feed (even for their own DSat broadcasts).

Channel took their feed from Meridian by 1999 in any case, not Westcountry.

Yes, which is why I’m wondering how they managed to broadcast it if indeed they did so. Does anyone have access to TV listings (from a newspaper or magazine) for that day?